Friday 15 December 2006

UTTER, UTTER RUBBISH!














My attention was brought to a particular toilet paper article by the most excellent blog "Random Acts".

There is not much more to say other than read the comments. And the article in question, below.

http://www.thesun.co.uk

My twenty cents are that there is a difference between rural crews and town crews in this regard.

I sit somewhere in the middle. We're supposed to be a ruralish crew but spend most of our time in Northtown as there are not enough crews there to cover the workload.

I know that in more rural stations they accepted the derisory offer from the ambulance service of £250 a year to "buy back" the meal break time we no longer get paid for. To make it clear when we are on our break we are not working. We could go home, shopping --- if there was time. A call during these welcome breaks is the same as calling you in to work from home, in effect.

The acceptance of this miserly sum, in ruralshire, was largely because the workload is not at saturation point. Crews are more likely to get time to have a meal during their shift without having to set aside a special "window" for this. Also there is additional social responsibility within smaller communities where you may be the only crew serving the community in which you live.

In larger cities or towns the £250 was stuffed up the services arse. This equates to an offer of approx. £2 an hour for overtime. It is not that crews do not care, of course we do. It would be a pretty thankless job if it was not for the reward of helping people who really need help. Rather the refusal is because 1. The offer was an insult 2. We need a break.

45 minutes away from work in 12 hours is not bad. If lives are lost it is because there are not enough crews around to meet demand under normal circumstances; not because humans need to eat to survive.

Eating aside, the 20 or 25 minutes you get off the clock makes a heck of a difference to your mental state over the 12 hours. Never getting fed was always a main complaint. Now its not. I wouldn't go as far as to say moral was better, just that we cant moan about being starved any more.

As for people being "forced" to finish a break, well - their not at work, not getting paid for it. The problem is more of finding the time to eat/rest rather than being made to. If there is an issue with a shortage of ambulances then there are things that could be done.
1. A reasonable offer to buy back the 45mins a day could be made. Although this would have to be "healthy" for me to consider having experienced the luxury of undisturbed breaks.
2. Additional crews could be put on the road to meet the underlying demand.
3. The "right" to transport by ambulance could be varied. It's never the ones who need/deserve an ambulance that complain. It's the bleeding warts and drunks that take exception to waiting. We should be able to refuse to transport such people where transport by emergency ambulance is not "appropriate or necessary". How many crews would this free up? I guess between 50% and 60%.

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